Remarks:
Built largely from The Shipping News profits,
Proulx designed her current summertime home to be in
harmony with its incomparable 640 acre (!) natural
setting. Of the house, she has said it is “a library
with a kitchen and some bedrooms attached.” A
contemporary “green” structure, it is dominated
by earth tones, lies low to the land, and fully exploits
an unrivaled view of the North Platte River and Sheep
Rock.

Bird Cloud, Proulx’s
fascinating tribute to her home, replete with detours
into her family’s history, the life and times of the
region, and the challenges she faced in designing and
constructing a very “special” home, is well
worth reading. Seeing the site before reading Bird
Cloud made us appreciate the book all the more.

The view from the huge windows of her
home is not static. Thousands of birds find shelter in
Sheep Rock’s natural depressions, making it a
natural avian sanctuary. It is a setting which reminded
one writer of this passage from The Shipping News:
“Nothing but rock and sea, the tiny figures of
humans and animals against them for a brief time.” [1]